


Regaining Personhood

by AngeNoir



Category: Merry Gentry - Laurell K Hamilton
Genre: Demisexuality, Implied/Referenced Torture, Introspection, M/M, Merry's damaged men, Multi, Non-Graphic Violence, One-Sided Attraction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-11
Updated: 2015-01-11
Packaged: 2018-03-07 02:06:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3156965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AngeNoir/pseuds/AngeNoir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is not as if he could touch the Queen's current consort, in any case. It wasn't as if he was his own person, to express interest that would not be seen as the Queen's words coming from his mouth.</p>
<p>It's not as if he was sure what he was feeling in the first place, really.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Regaining Personhood

Jack Frost, they called him long ago. Doyle too had names, long forgotten, but this man, this sidhe, stepped fully formed from ice and frost. He was much newer than Doyle, his name closer in remembered history than Doyle’s true name. Other names, names that came to Doyle as his strength grew, Doyle could still remember, and others remembered as well, but Doyle looked upon pale, pale flesh and realized this young sidhe will break, and break soon.

He bled as easily as Doyle does, but for some reason his blood seemed brighter. Something to mourn. Doyle cannot explain why.

Long since, Doyle had given up trying to keep his Queen from harming the Guard – in part because she would do as she willed in any case, and in part because he realized he would do more good as a distraction only just before she seriously maimed one of his men. If he intervened too early, her bloodlust and insanity would only grow, so that the next time, or the next, or the time after, his intervention would do nothing at all and she would severely damage those under his command.

Better to let her whet her appetite, sate some of that insanity, before stepping in and taking her attention onto his body.

(Sometimes, he cursed the fact that his body cannot hold scars, cannot bear testimony to the cruelty he endures now and has endured for centuries. But the gods do not answer his curses, his pleas, his wordless cries, as they have not answered all for so long.)

He did not know what set her off, what imagined slight has her whipping the no-longer pristine muscles of Frost’s back and buttocks. He found he did not care. He stood on the edge of the room and watched vivid lines of scarlet stain such delicate skin. Doyle has always known he was not interested in any one form, but in the mind, in the strength, the character. It was unwelcome to learn that here, in this room, he may in fact be interested in his Queen’s current consort. He tried to avert his gaze from those broken, beautiful ice eyes, and he waited until he judged the moment right.

Then he was moving, soundless, cautious, stepping into her line of sight and she whirled, whip lashing out, which he took, silent and stoic. This dance was old, too old, and it grew longer and more involved and more dangerous as the centuries passed. He could never reveal how tired he was of it, of his Queen’s moods. He was terrified of her, of her rages, of her unpredictable temper that could have him splayed out, staining her floor.

From the side of the room, another of the Guard stepped forward and quietly drew Frost away.

With Frost gone from her clutches, he could focus on simply surviving. And he cursed his existence – but never enough to stop it.

***

After the healer was through with him, he made his way to Frost’s rooms within the sithen, knocking lightly against the frame. When no answer came, he knocked once more, but he worried. Perhaps Frost was trying to get some rest. No one deserved it more, tonight – their Queen had focused in on Frost and Frost alone – and Doyle would not be welcome to disturb such rest, not even with the news he had.

But when he turned to leave, the door opened and Frost stood there, naked and shoulders stiff. Doyle turned and allowed his eyes to travel the lines of flesh bared before him.

“What does my Queen wish of me?” Frost asked, voice cold and, ever so slightly, vulnerable.

Doyle bit his tongue, trying to keep his anger from lashing out at the one person who did not deserve it. He was nothing more than an extension of his Queen, now, unable in any’s eyes to have thoughts separate from those she thought, to have actions separate from hers. He could not change anyone’s perceptions of him, not in this, so instead he said as evenly as he could, “My Queen has ordered all of her Ravens to be celibate. She is with child.”

Horror appeared in Frost’s eyes, and Doyle could see that Jack Frost, Jackie Frost, should never have come to the Unseelie Court. It was not the place for this creature of delicacy and newness. For all that Frost was easily 1000 years or so old, he was young compared to most of their ranks. He had not the political awareness to school his face, to withstand the daily tortures, to be as cruel as his opponents.

Then Doyle inclined his head and said gently, “She is to be handfasted to Eamon on the morrow.”

The naked relief was clear on Frost’s face, enough so that he sagged a little against the door. “Eamon’s child,” he whispered.

“Yes,” Doyle replied quietly, and he wished he could reach out. Touch. Offer tactile comfort for the young sidhe that stood before him.

But he could not, because of what others said about him, what others called him. The Queen’s Darkness, never just Doyle. He was not his own person, anymore, and Frost treated him no differently than the rest of the Guard did. Doyle had no right to do anything different.

So instead he bowed again, and turned on his heel.

And left.

***

Years upon years later, lying within a bed, sheets tangled around his legs and his braid laying heavy at his side, he stared at the small woman that made this possible, that freed him from the cruel bondage he had been enmeshed in for millennia. And he stared at that long expanse of beautiful white flesh, receptive now to his touches, his gentle kisses, his tentative forays towards something more. The tabloids may speculate, may do whatever they wished – he had his two loves here, in his arms, and that was more than he could have ever hoped for.


End file.
